Portable serialization of CORBA objects: a reflective approach

The objective of this work is to define, implement and illustrate a portable serialization technique for CORBA objects. We propose an approach based on reflection: through open compilers facilities the internal state of CORBA objects is obtained and transformed into a language independent format using CORBA mechanisms. This state can be restored and used by objects developed using different languages and running on different software platforms. A tool was developed and applied to a Chat application as a case study. The proposed technique is used to exchange state information between a C++ and a Java incarnation of this CORBA service. An observer tool enables the object state to be displayed and analyzed by the user. The applicability of this technique to various domains is discussed. Beyond the interest of language reflection, we finally advocate that operating system and middleware reflection would also be powerful concepts to extend the work presented in this paper.